The Museum of Arts & Design at Columbus Circle with its “Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary” thematic exhibit features 40 contemporary artists from a variety of countries who renovate discarded, everyday, or valueless objects into unexpected forms of art. The works created from puzzle pieces, aluminum bottle caps, spools of thread, buttons, combs, tires, gun triggers, hypodermic needles, old eyeglasses, silverware, ceramic plates, and telephone books, among other manufactured and mass-produced objects were showcased in highly extraordinary ways through the eyes of the artists. Each piece conveyed a relationship between the part and the whole, when one observes a single item it seems rather ordinary and holds very little meaning, but when it is composed in a collage among others of its kind, a story begins to unfold. Mundane pieces make up the significant whole.

The work in exhibit contained implicit social commentary and explore themes of society, identity, power, and value. Moreover each piece confined itself within the traditional standards of craftsmanship which included the use of collage, carving, and cabinet making. Artist Subodh Gupta crafted a piece with native Indian silverware. Composed of pots, pans, spatulas and other kitchenware, Gupta showed the relationship of his local area of India and the world on a larger scale. Each piece in his work was soldered together, implying the idea of a local and global melting pot organized to fit within the confines of a circular world-like structure. Within each silver piece, a reflection of ourselves can be seen; with a group we are able to see many reflections of people, of different colors and backgrounds.  Like a work of literature, each piece may be a word or a chapter about a specific person, once combined, it is a book filled with biographies about a wide array of identities and multitudes of culture.

Another artist by the name of Sonya Clark showcased a work of black hair combs creating a portrait of Madam C.J. Walker. A description reads the piece is about the struggles of life, I believe it to be about the lives of black Americans during the time of slavery. A bit of background states that Madam C.J. Walker was born into a former-slave family and became an entrepreneur in woman’s hair care products, therefore the use of hair combs in the piece. Ironically the hair combs used for the work were branded “unbreakable” but are displayed broken with missing teeth either partially or entirely. Moreover, the woven pattern of the work suggests the knitting and sewing occupation of female slaves during the time. These women were to pick cotton that was to be woven into garments.  This piece is powerful in numerous ways, it told stories of a particular woman Madam C.J. Walker and her personal achievement extending to women overcoming the hardships of a male dominated world, and provided satirical details of how everything comes together by the use of “unbreakable” combs which were indeed breakable.

A noteworthy mention is a chandelier festooned with pills and hundreds of glittering syringes that hangs disturbingly high on the ceiling. Space Station, a collaborative effort between Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth brought together exposed syringes embellished with shimmering crimson Swarovski crystal droplets and gel capsules in an astonishing manner. The piece tells the powerful stories of evolution, regeneration, chemistry, and death in a stunning demonstration of drug use, abuse, and all negative matters in such an elaborate and glamorized manner.

The Museum of Arts and Design’s exhibit of “Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary” brought new light to commonplace and overlooked items as new art media.  Illustrated perceptions of different people which relates to the cliché of “one man’s junk is another’s treasure” was seen throughout the exhibition. Each work shared stories of identity, individuality, power, social genres that integrated themselves into a greater collective theme of the lives we tend overlook in a world without the arts.